Staff deals with more red tape while earning less

Homeless U.S. Army veteran and unemployed carpenter Steven Wise (R), receives a dental checkup at a 'Stand Down' event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs on November 3, 2011 in Denver, Colorado.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Veterans Affairs hospitals and facilities across the country have almost 2,000 openings for health care professionals, but they’re struggling to fill the jobs because a lot of nurses and doctors aren’t interested.

It was recently reported that 40 people on waiting lists at the VA health care system in Phoenix, Ariz., later died, although it is unclear whether the deaths resulted from delayed treatment. There also have been reports of unauthorized waiting lists, often months-long, being used to deal with a deluge of patients. Despite the decreasing veteran population, the number of patient appointments is up – at about 85 million appointments a year, President Barack Obama said Wednesday in the White House press room.

The entire nation is experiencing a shortage of health care providers, but the VA’s issues are compounded because it must compete for those providers with non-government hospitals, which operate with half the red tape and offer higher wages.

Genevieve Billia, a VA spokesperson, sums up the situation this way: “Some factors include: the growing national shortage and availability of experienced, quality candidates who possess the competencies required for the position; the salaries typically paid by private industry for similar positions; employment trends and labor-market factors that may affect the ability to recruit candidates; and other supporting factors such as rural/highly rural locations that may be considered less desirable.”

But for health care professionals, the pitfalls of working for the VA come down to time and money.

“There are several challenges. The hiring process — it’s just too long… Then once you get in, there’s another piece of red tape for [registered nurses] to get licensing and verification and background checks,” says Irma Westmoreland, an RN at a VA medical center in Georgia and a representative of National Nurses United.

Westmoreland, who has worked at VA medical facilities for decades, says the positions offered by the VA are becoming less desirable especially for younger nurses entering the field. In addition to the prolonged application process, she says, they are turned off by an unreliable promotion schedule — things she says that make non-government hospitals more appealing.

An example of the VA’s disadvantage when hiring nurses, Westmoreland points out, is that the agency will not promote nurses with a two-year associate’s degree to a senior position, even if they have worked at the VA for years.

Nurses salaries at VA hospitals are competitive, according to 2012 BLS data. But it’s the red tape that makes the jobs less appealing, especially when the difference in wages is only a few thousand dollars a year.

Although the population of veterans in the United States has peaked and will continue to fall, VA hospitals and outpatient facilities have experienced an intensified demand from aging baby boomer veterans and survivors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom are coming home with wounds that soldiers wouldn’t have survived in earlier conflicts.

Source: Department of Veteran Affairs

“We do know that there’s a 45 percent increase in outpatient medical appointments since 2005,” said Debra Draper, director of health care at the Government Accountability Office. “People are surviving things that they never would have survived before and would need more specialty care and ongoing care needs.”

She added, “If you have a shortage of providers that certainly does limit your capacity.”

Lee Bowman, Scripps National Reporter, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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